The Furniture of Mad Men: Don Draper’s Office
With the upcoming season of Mad Men, the Mid-Century Modernist
has turned its eye on spotting some of the furniture that makes
part of the set of one of the best dramas on television.
The series is set in the 1960s and the designers have made every
effort to depict what a Madison Avenue ad agency really looked like,
starting with Don Draper’s Office.
We wanted to make sure it wasn’t a textbook study of mid-century modern America — as Matt
specifically pointed out, look around your own house, does everything
exist from 2007 or do you actually have stuff lying around from the ’80s?
- Dan Bishop, Production Designer
“One of the best references — we just used it this morning for the size of a baby
blanket — is the Searscatalogs and the Montgomery Ward catalog,” she says.
“They’re so specific, and they have all these items.
And then I have every decorating bookfrom the late ’40s throughthe mid
-’60s. So Better Homes & Gardens — you know,
all those decorating books that came out every year — I have all of those.”
- Amy Wells, Set Decorator
Shallard House by Lat Forty Five
Necessity is the mother of invention, so they say – and this applies to architecture as much as any other endeavour. The designer and co-owner of this house, engineer Guy Shallard of Lat Forty Five, says necessity was precisely the reason he chose to elevate the living area and suspend it like a bridge several metres above the ground. “The long, narrow site is surrounded by other properties,” Shallard says. “And although the site is parallel to the lake, the living areas needed to be elevated to maximise the views and provide privacy.”